Putting the science back in Wasteland 2‘s science fiction

Academic consultants are making the post-apocalyptic world more "realistic."

In the modern game industry, the term "realism" gets thrown around in a lot. A critic might praise the realistic physics in a game where faster-than-light spaceships carry players to fight building-sized bug-aliens, for instance. Or a developer might talk up the accuracy and realism of the weapon selection in a military shooter where a character can get shot in the face five times and be just fine 10 seconds later. There are obviously some limits to exactly how much realism we want in our escapist fantasy.

Still, it might be nice if the fantastical worlds we play in were at least plausible, if not exactly "realistic." That's where Thwacke Consulting comes in. The recently formed firm has set up a wide-ranging team of academic experts in fields ranging from geology and biology to nanotechnlogy and particle physics. Their goal: to provide scientific reference material to help flesh out even the most implausible fictional game worlds, a goal they'll try to realize for the first time with the post-apocalyptic nuclear hellscape of InXile Entertainment's Wasteland 2 Kickstarter project.

After a year and a half of mulling over the idea, Thwacke's Sebastian Alvarado officially set up shop in April. He was pushed by a frustration with games that tend to use science and technology as a kind of unexplained magic to make things work in a fictional world. Take the "genetic memories" that power the time-spanning animus in the Assassin's Creed games. Alvarado, an expert in evolutionary genetics himself, says there's actually something to the concept of passing down learning through genes. Still, "DNA is such an easy cop-out these days," he told Ars. "It's an easy way to explain all that, and they just expect the player to say, 'Well he said DNA so now I have to buy the story.' It's like a magic gateway."

Games' explanation of futuristic technology often isn't any better. "If you just said, 'Oh, nanomachines did it,' and stop there, we'd like to say, 'Oh, nanomachines did it, because of this, this, and this, and did you know that last year's discovery showed that they've replicated 30 percent of the idea in the video game?' Something like that really resonates with the player and makes it really cool and makes them more immersed in it."

Thwacke put out feelers for its concept by publishingarticles examining the scientific background of games like Assassin's Creed and Mass Effect in the specialist press. He was encouraged by the strong response. The team then started approaching game makers, offering to provide similar background to inform games as they were being made. InXile was the first one to take them up on the deal, and it's been a good match, according to founder Brian Fargo.

"Each one of the writers on Wasteland 2 has benefited from their work in either being inspired or finding some real world facts to help them put their ideas into a stronger basis," Fargo told Ars. "Colin McComb garnered quite a bit of information on poisons, explosives, and water issues to help shape his map for example. ... I gravitated towards the idea of working with them when I read about the kinds of creatures that would thrive in nuclear fallout or about dust storms and the use of ethical dilemmas in situations and how the brain looks at risk and reward."

"...everyone knows radiation makes things super-large"

Enlarge/ Could we actually build a giant robotic scorpion with chain guns? I bet Thwacke knows the answer...

To help shape Wasteland 2's radiation-soaked, er, wasteland, the team at Thwacke reviewed research on everything from Hiroshima to the nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll to determine how survivors and the environment would be affected. For example, Alvarado points out that nuclear blasts often create trinitite, a shiny green glass formed when sand gets super-heated incredibly quickly. Thwacke passes that background on to InXile and lets them decide how or whether to use it in the game.

One of the best examples of how Wasteland 2 will be intertwining real world science and imaginative fantasy probably comes through in enemy design. Alvarado recalls that the InXile team needed some believable enemies for a waterlogged area that had been ruined by a natural disaster. "We wanted to explore what kind of animals would survive in water and out of water, what animals do we know that live in a tidal zone and that could survive, things like that," he said.

The scientists found the humble hermit crab was a likely candidate for post-nuclear survival, thanks to its ability to absorb radiation in its shell and then discard it during a molting cycle. That's the academically valid, scientific part. But since this is still a video game, they wanted to make sure it was a little "off the wall" as Alvarado put it.

"We used radiation as a very simple gaming mechanism to argue that it makes animals super large, because everyone knows radiation makes things super-large... we'll just take that one as a granted," he said, laughing. "So let's let these hermit crabs get [so big] they can't find housing in their conventional shell and they'll actually seek housing in a bus or a telephone booth or something like that."

"So the whole idea is that they'll hide in parts of the environment and they'd actually have this stealth ability, in the fact that they wouldn't actually be seen by the player," Alvarado continued. "It kind of works with a bit of biology, it works a bit with what Wasteland is after ... it fits into this world that Wasteland has with bizarre and fun off-the-wall type humor and everything."

Feeding the obsession

A lot of the information Thwacke provides for the game won't have such a direct impact on game design, but will end up as background that goes into a Mass Effect-style codex to help describe the backstory and lore of the world, Alvarado said. Many players will ignore this kind of superfluous information, but Alvarado expects many obsessive players will eat it up.

"I've seen tons and tons of arguments online, people arguing about how one alien in Mass Effect can defeat another alien in Mass Effect just based on evolutionary biology. Looking at the science in these fictional universes, people have arguments over them, which really thrills me, because it's people really thinking about this kind of science."

Enlarge/ You may not care how accurate the rate of plant growth on those abandoned buildings is, but it's nice to know that somebody does.

"There's this type of immersion that a lot of these developers are trying to achieve now. It goes past just designing a game, it goes into really developing a narrative," he continued. "It's one thing to play a game and get addicted to shooting things on-screen. It's another thing to really be drawn into a story to something you believe to be close to reality. We really want to build as much real life as we can in the game while still maintaining the vision of the game and creating that immersion and building upon that."

While Fargo says most players probably wouldn't mind if Wasteland 2 had no connection to modern science, he thinks having some grounding in reality can only be a good thing. "I find that being inspired by nature and science is always helpful when fleshing out a world," he said. "Nobody really cared how the forests of Avatar were inspired by Cameron's exploration of the ocean yet it gave it a wonderful look. Much of our work with Thwacke helped inspire some big ideas that we might not have come across otherwise. Sometimes the truth really is stranger than fiction."

It's important that a focus on realism doesn't impinge on making a fun and imaginative games, though. Fargo says players definitely shouldn't worry on that score. "We would never let the realism trump the fun factor of the gameplay as our goal is to make a game a not a simulator or learning game," he said. "We are focused on the experience over the realism and the two can work hand in hand. The sensibilities of our Wasteland world are well documented in the vision document that we posted so the input of Thwacke does not affect the world feel in a negative way."

Alvarado agrees wholeheartedly. "I know some people are saying, 'Oh, I don't want Wasteland 2 to be scientifically accurate or realistic, because that would ruin such an off the wall game,' we're not doing that at all. ... We know that the game would be pretty boring if it had to be 100 percent realistic. We're trying to add some science facts on to their fiction just to give it a bit more grounding in reality. If you happen to identify with some of the actual science, you enjoy it that much more. If you don't, that's fine, you're still going to enjoy the game."

But for those that do care, Alvarado is excited his efforts might help expand players' curiosity. "We're doing our bit for science literacy," he said. "If we can make a really cool idea into a game that educates people, we know we're doing our job well. At the end of the day, people really are interested in learning, it's a behavior we all know we have."

Promoted Comments

My personal pet peeve is bad physics in scenes involving flight and space flight. Sometimes I feel like I'll scream if I see another "helicopter chops up stuff with its rotors and flies away" scene like I did in one of the recent James Bond movies.

In this scene, a helicopter tilts forward at a 45º angle while still hovering, then moves forward like a weedwacker, chopping up everything in its path. That scene was wrong on so many levels... and yet it was a big part of the chase scene. (As we all know, every James Bond movie has to have Bond get captured, followed by a highly improbably chase scene. This one featured the weed-eating helicopter and a motorcycle, if I recall correctly.)

On the other hand, I don't want too much science in my science fiction. I don't want to know that Superman can't actually fly or that spaceships can't actually fly faster than the speed of light... SF would be awefully boring if we had to stick to entirely mundane elements.

However, the more plausible most of the story is, the easier it is to accept the few things that are completely over the top.

My personal pet peeve is bad physics in scenes involving flight and space flight. Sometimes I feel like I'll scream if I see another "helicopter chops up stuff with its rotors and flies away" scene like I did in one of the recent James Bond movies.

In this scene, a helicopter tilts forward at a 45º angle while still hovering, then moves forward like a weedwacker, chopping up everything in its path. That scene was wrong on so many levels... and yet it was a big part of the chase scene. (As we all know, every James Bond movie has to have Bond get captured, followed by a highly improbably chase scene. This one featured the weed-eating helicopter and a motorcycle, if I recall correctly.)

On the other hand, I don't want too much science in my science fiction. I don't want to know that Superman can't actually fly or that spaceships can't actually fly faster than the speed of light... SF would be awefully boring if we had to stick to entirely mundane elements.

However, the more plausible most of the story is, the easier it is to accept the few things that are completely over the top.

I fear that the farther you go down the path of realism, the harder it gets to suspend disbelief in the necessary conceits that make the story fun and interesting. From a designer standpoint, I worry that too much understanding may constrain their ability to come up with really interesting and fanciful stuff. For example, it's probably harder to design fantasy aircraft once you go past knowing more or less what planes look like and assembling the components aesthetically to the level of having a true sense of aerodynamics and designing too closely to what's plausible.

It's probably better that this is left to a 3rd party as a gatekeeper of the information.

You know what other game put a lot of work into making sure it had good science? Master of Orion 3.

So the logical fallacy of correlation proves causation shows that Wasteland 2 making sure it has good science will also mean they make a buggy and incomplete game?

Not to speak for him, but I think the point of that post was that good science isn't sufficient condition for making a good game.(The plethora of good games that don't incorporate good science prove that it isn't even a necessary condition).

I dont really like the word realism here, I think plausibility is better.

Everyone has had those moments in movies where you tilt your head and say, "Theres no way that could have happened." Its a jarring experience and removes you from the world and the narrative. Removing these moments can only be good in my book.

As someone who wanted to smash their face into the keyboard multiple times upon playing Mass Effect 2, I'm certainly glad this service exists!

Alright, not that Mass Effect 2's wonderfully braindead story could have been saved by this service, but it might have helped. And if it can help other games, well then that's just neat as well. It would be fun to read plausible technical specs for a Mr. Handy in Fallout 4 and have them be plausible. I think it might add to the silliness of it all at least.

Not that most people are going to understand that any of this, if it gets implemented, is accurate. But as someone who could identify that at least parts of it are, I wouldn't mind seeing it. I also think there's a definitive tac to being inspired by things you don't know. So much of fictional worlds blend into each other just because the writers are taking inspiration from the same pool, which is watching Aliens and reading The Lord of the Rings and Ringworld and what have you. But real life offers a lot more very cool things to find, and should be able to help bring out new ideas.

I dont really like the word realism here, I think plausibility is better.

Everyone has had those moments in movies where you tilt your head and say, "Theres no way that could have happened." Its a jarring experience and removes you from the world and the narrative. Removing these moments can only be good in my book.

My most recent such experience was watching the Avengers, (mild and vague spoilers) :

The money scene where the Hulk punches something 1000 times his mass. I don't care how strong he is, he should have gone flying backwards at a high velocity!

So, I understand what you are saying, but is it really necessary to adhere to real-world scientific plausability to remove those moments? There could have been a comic-book physics explanation for that scene above, like, maybe the Hulk is really dense, or something.

Or does it just have to be plausible in the framework of the fictional universe?

My personal pet peeve is bad physics in scenes involving flight and space flight. Sometimes I feel like I'll scream if I see another "helicopter chops up stuff with its rotors and flies away" scene like I did in one of the recent James Bond movies.

In this scene, a helicopter tilts forward at a 45º angle while still hovering, then moves forward like a weedwacker, chopping up everything in its path. That scene was wrong on so many levels... and yet it was a big part of the chase scene. (As we all know, every James Bond movie has to have Bond get captured, followed by a highly improbably chase scene. This one featured the weed-eating helicopter and a motorcycle, if I recall correctly.).

I saw some of this movie myself the other day and agree completely. Bad science comes across as shockingly sloppy or incredibly arrogant, I'm not sure which. Either way it is like a slap in the face, and ruins any immersion the game or movie has built up by that point. On the other hand even if the science is not real, if it has a logical and plausible sounding explanation it will draw me into the story.

I love the idea that they're taking inspiration from the real world without locking themselves into being a realistic post-apocalypse simulator. Learning about what real life in a post-apocalyptic world might be like could be an amazing source of interesting ideas. While a grimly realistic survival game could be interesting, it wouldn't be Wasteland 2. A quirky, humorous adaptation of that gritty realistic survival game would be more what I would expect from Wasteland 2.

I shrugs when everyone says this, I disagree completely a 100% scientifically accurate game is not fun, no body has actually tried hard enough---there are fun things in real life!

There is what I call an uncanny valley of realism. Super hero movies are fine to many because it is over the top. Drama movies are fine because they are firmly rooted in reality. It is those half-ass approach to realism that is the problem.You have Alien movies where their ability to kill is over the top, fine, scientifically firm cryogenics crew pods and space ship design, great; but you get alien biological growth rate that defy conservation of mass in many scenes, boo.

I dont really like the word realism here, I think plausibility is better.

Everyone has had those moments in movies where you tilt your head and say, "Theres no way that could have happened." Its a jarring experience and removes you from the world and the narrative. Removing these moments can only be good in my book.

My most recent such experience was watching the Avengers, (mild and vague spoilers) :

The money scene where the Hulk punches something 1000 times his mass. I don't care how strong he is, he should have gone flying backwards at a high velocity!

So, I understand what you are saying, but is it really necessary to adhere to real-world scientific plausability to remove those moments? There could have been a comic-book physics explanation for that scene above, like, maybe the Hulk is really dense, or something.

Or does it just have to be plausible in the framework of the fictional universe?

I think plausible in the realm of the fictional universe is a good way of putting it. Firefly did a really good job on this. Plausible enough to make it credible and engaging, while being outlandish enough that it wasnt trying to take its fiction too seriously.

You know what other game put a lot of work into making sure it had good science? Master of Orion 3.

So the logical fallacy of correlation proves causation shows that Wasteland 2 making sure it has good science will also mean they make a buggy and incomplete game?

Not to speak for him, but I think the point of that post was that good science isn't sufficient condition for making a good game.(The plethora of good games that don't incorporate good science prove that it isn't even a necessary condition).

I was just being funny. "You know who else liked _______ "

But yeah, what you said; it's a question of time and resources. If the money these contractors are getting wouldn't put another aspect of the game ahead in a significant manner, then awesome. But you know this issue will come up if anything else in the product ends up falling short. Ideally, this causes such contractors to work their asses off trying to be useful and prove their worth.

Master of Orion 3 spent a lot of time creating a universe where aliens weren't humans in foam costumes and rubber ears. The problem was the knowledge gained from exploring that wasn't used to serve what the marketplace actually wanted.

I'm an avid fan of hard sci-fi and I love to limit my suspension of disbelief. As a result, I don't understand why having a completely realistic (or providing only one or two fantastic ideas) storyline is such a bad thing.Obviously fantasy as a genre doesn't fit into that ideology but the aftermath of a nuclear war doesn't have to bend reality to be entertaining.

Could we actually build a giant robotic scorpion with chain guns? I bet Thwacke knows the answer...

Yes, we could, but the guns in the illustration aren't chain guns (R). They're rotary guns -- often called Gatling guns -- which are externally powered like chain guns, but don't use a chain mechanism in the feeder/delinker.

Games' explanation of futuristic technology often isn't any better. "If you just said, 'Oh, nanomachines did it,' and stop there, we'd like to say, 'Oh, nanomachines did it, because of this, this, and this, and did you know that last year's discovery showed that they've replicated 30 percent of the idea in the video game?' Something like that really resonates with the player and makes it really cool and makes them more immersed in it."

You know what I don't want in my games? A 10 minute dissertation on how nanotech is used to handwave something. Just tell me what the handwave is; I'll buy into it based on how much I like your game. If your game is shit, I won't care about the handwave because your game is shit. And if your game is good, I won't care about the handwave because your game is good.

It's like all of the tedious parts of Mass Effect, where they do things like try to explain how Quarrians catch alien diseases, which then became not really catching alien diseases but getting an allergic reaction, but that doesn't make sense because you don't take antibiotics to deal with allergic reactions, and on and on until I wanted to shoot Tali'Zorah nar Rayya vas Normandy in the fucking face.

I don't want more of that nonsense in my videogames, thank you.

Quote:

Could we actually build a giant robotic scorpion with chain guns? I bet Thwacke knows the answer...

Who cares?! Either the Giant Robotic Scorpion is awesome, or it's not. I don't need a dissertation on why it might be possible or not. I want it to provide interesting gameplay and look cool.

Quote:

"I've seen tons and tons of arguments online, people arguing about how one alien in Mass Effect can defeat another alien in Mass Effect just based on evolutionary biology. Looking at the science in these fictional universes, people have arguments over them, which really thrills me, because it's people really thinking about this kind of science."

Right. Who cares about the plot, characters, themes, or gameplay of Mass Effect when we could instead sit around and argue about which species is more evolutionarily sound.

These people are actually being paid to fanwank. I honestly can't believe it.

I loved Sid Meyer's Alpha Centauri. I didn't love it because of its "realism"; I loved it because it had really good gameplay.

mickliddy wrote:

I'm an avid fan of hard sci-fi and I love to limit my suspension of disbelief. As a result, I don't understand why having a completely realistic (or providing only one or two fantastic ideas) storyline is such a bad thing.Obviously fantasy as a genre doesn't fit into that ideology but the aftermath of a nuclear war doesn't have to bend reality to be entertaining.

It's not about being a "bad thing". My problem is the over-emphasis on it. It's not a good thing either; it's a side issue that's completely irrelevant to the quality of the story/gameplay presented.

My other problem is that the people who tend to do this in their work love being know-it-alls and will take every conceivable opportunity to shove this knowledge down your throat. Usually shutting down narrative pacing and momentum while doing so.

(3) Explosive based weapons (Ammo uses gunpowder) work everywhere (see 1) or even under water or in a vacuum.

I hate to be an ass, but firearms will work in a vacuum or inert atmosphere as the cartridges contain an oxidant. Otherwise they would not work at all, as oxygen will not travel into a gun barrel fast enough to sustain the reaction of the propellant.

The impression I get is that the science here is being used for inspiration rather than as a fact check, I don't see how that should be objectionable. If you have two options that are otherwise equally good, and one is based on our understanding of science and the natural world, and the other isn't, why not go with it? It may even make things easier in the long run because you're not reinventing the wheel, you can use real world details appearances and behaviours rather than having to make things up from scratch.

For example, Alvarado points out that nuclear blasts often create trinitite, a shiny green glass formed when sand gets super-heated incredibly quickly. Thwacke passes that background on to InXile and lets them decide how or whether to use it in the game.

Consistency is certainly a big part of creating a good foundation for a game world, but the real win from doing "realism research" is that our imaginations are generally paltry compared by the bizarre wonder of reality.

I see games, stories, movies all the time where ever component is a rehash of a rehash of a rehash of Star Wars, written by as one excellent critic remarked of Thomas Kinkade, "..as if [they were] painted by someone who hadn't been outside in a long time."

The impression I get is that the science here is being used for inspiration rather than as a fact check, I don't see how that should be objectionable. If you have two options that are otherwise equally good, and one is based on our understanding of science and the natural world, and the other isn't, why not go with it?

If both are "equally good," then it's purely an artistic choice. But they're not equal.

In general, I have rarely seen a work that bills itself on being "realistic" that didn't hold forth, usually at great length, about how realistic it was being. 2001: A Space Odyssey, a great audio/visual presentation, basically sacrificed narrative momentum and pacing in order to just show cool realism.

And that's fine, if you like that. But if you want to get down to the actual story being told, or the gameplay being played, it's not helping.

The impression I get is that the science here is being used for inspiration rather than as a fact check, I don't see how that should be objectionable. If you have two options that are otherwise equally good, and one is based on our understanding of science and the natural world, and the other isn't, why not go with it? It may even make things easier in the long run because you're not reinventing the wheel, you can use real world details appearances and behaviours rather than having to make things up from scratch.

Exactly -- 1) science says hermit crabs have a high tolerance for radiation, so let's use them as a plausible monster2) we'll make them giant-size because that's more fun, and people like the (fake science) idea that radiation = giant monsters. Gamera's full of turtle meat!

(3) Explosive based weapons (Ammo uses gunpowder) work everywhere (see 1) or even under water or in a vacuum.

True most of the time. Cartridges are usually sealed and those work underwater and in vacuum. Explosives like nitrocellulose contain their own oxidizer. The range is very short under water, though. There have been a number of guns adapted to work better underwater by using larger, slower projectiles or rocket-powered projectiles.

No matter what planet you land on you will(3) Explosive based weapons (Ammo uses gunpowder) work everywhere (see 1) or even under water or in a vacuum.

Our ballistics weapons will work fine in a vacuum. The powder contains oxidants that will work fine in low-oxygen or hazardous environments. Underwater they'll still work fine (provided that the case hasn't been ruptured and the powder is wet) but the weapon will likely explode from the rapid expulsion of water from the weapon, ripping the receiver apart.

Could we actually build a giant robotic scorpion with chain guns? I bet Thwacke knows the answer...

Yes, we could, but the guns in the illustration aren't chain guns (R). They're rotary guns -- often called Gatling guns -- which are externally powered like chain guns, but don't use a chain mechanism in the feeder/delinker.

You know, I'd just checked up on this to make sure I was right and... Beaten. Gatling gun / minigun.

(9) You are never given the option to slap that one idiot NPC they always put into a game.

Baldur's Gate: You can kill the annoying NPC intentionally put into the game to annoy you. In fact, you can kill almost everyone and everything.

MrG3 wrote:

(10) Your bullets will miraculously go around all friendly targets.

BG again, you can fireball/lightning bolt/whatever the bejesus out of your own dudes, and neutrals. Neutrals with turn hostile. Be careful.Weirdly, you can't do this in some setting of Neverwinter Nights.

"Nobody really cared how the forests of Avatar were inspired by Cameron's exploration of the ocean yet it gave it a wonderful look."

I actually found it distracting because many animals/plants were not "inspired" so much as exact copies of things that live underwater, shown as terrestrial organisms. He should have been a little more loose with his inspiration in my opinion.

But this is kind of like doctors criticizing TV medicine. There's a point where you know too much and it's much harder to satisfy you....

I dont really like the word realism here, I think plausibility is better.

Everyone has had those moments in movies where you tilt your head and say, "Theres no way that could have happened." Its a jarring experience and removes you from the world and the narrative. Removing these moments can only be good in my book.

My most recent such experience was watching the Avengers, (mild and vague spoilers) :

The money scene where the Hulk punches something 1000 times his mass. I don't care how strong he is, he should have gone flying backwards at a high velocity!

So, I understand what you are saying, but is it really necessary to adhere to real-world scientific plausability to remove those moments? There could have been a comic-book physics explanation for that scene above, like, maybe the Hulk is really dense, or something.

Or does it just have to be plausible in the framework of the fictional universe?

I had no problems with that scene. But when they explain how it was gamma radiation that turned him in to the hulk...I would much rather that they do not explain than pull that kind of crap. If it's magic just say magic and be done with it. If you want to do some kind of sciency explanation then hire someone who can at least check it for glaring mistakes.

There are many realistic-looking games out there that try to immerse players in some apocalyptic context. There are few hilarious ones. I showed up for finals my first year in college having neither slept nor read for 3 days, not because Wasteland was scientifically accurate or even plausible in the slightest, and certainly not for the graphics, but because it was giggle-inducing fun when I was at my most stressed. And Wasteland is still my favorite game, ever. That's the legacy that's at risk.

(BTW, my first exam was an essay for a philosophy class. In my delirium I kept trying to hit the nonexistent escape key on my desk so the exam paper would go away. I have no idea what I actually wrote - was too scared to collect my test after - but I got a B.)

It does not automatically help having science folks on a game or movie. First of all, the writers typically ask the science person AFTER they have decided what should happen so the job for the science bogs down to coming up with slightly more reasonable technobabble.

Then, which is far worse I think, the science person can be inappropriate for the job. A movie or game would be better off with an engineer than the typical star name phycisist that tend to get the job. A case in point is Dr Brian Cox (famous physics TV guy) that was the science consultant for the movie Sunshine.

[SPOILER ALERT] I can live with having gravity indoors despite no spin-habitats etc, as long as they don't mention it. I can live with stopover at Mercury despite having no remass to burn. I can live with the handpicked elite crew which job is to save mankind not having decided who is in charge. I can even live with the totally jarring third segment supernatural slasher antagonist. What totally ruined that movie for me was the fire in the green house. You have a green house to create oxygen for the crew and when a fire starts there they decide to quench it by flushing huge amounts of liquid oxygen at it!

Yup, they totally burn all plants to ash and simultaneously get rid of all their stored oxygen thus creating the too-many-crew-members-for-the-remaining-oxygen-we-must-pick-who-dies plotline. This is supposed to be a handpicked crew of Earths smartest and most able spacers and scientists. Dr Brian Cox let that slide and concentrated instead on a weird and physically clever reasons why the sun had gone weak, that never showed in the movie.

Concentrate on the small stuff that every child knows (and don't get me started on the Prometheus trainwreck).

(3) Explosive based weapons (Ammo uses gunpowder) work everywhere (see 1) or even under water or in a vacuum.

Actually, explosives don't need air. More precisely, they don't need an oxidizing agent, because in explosive substance, the oxidizing and the reactant are both provided on the same molecule.

So yeah, explosives work in vacuum and under water.

Diluting an explosive (by mixing it with water for example) can indeed prevent the explosive reaction, but a tightly sealed bullet will stay usable.Note that due to the incompressibility of the water in the cannon or in general in the path of the exhaust gas of a gun, the gun itself might malfunction/explode under water.

All cool, except for the part where the cost of making a game skyrockets, while the actual fun to be had has been static for years now, and most games fail in that department more than they should.

Game manufacturers seem to be setting the bar higher and higher, but not so much in the fun department. I'm all for advancing the technology, but don't cry when your 50 million dollar video game is a bomb nobody wants to play.

It also sucks for the little guy, because the resources needed to compete on all levels with a giant corporation is impossible to attain.

Graphics and sound are immersion tools, but when you immerse me in a turd I get disappointed.

It's an interesting idea, I just wish they'd arrived in time to fix the Mass Effect 3 ending, because I'm pretty sure machine DNA doesn't make any sense, and if you can safely control something with a signal, why can't you destroy it the same way?

Kyle Orland / Kyle is the Senior Gaming Editor at Ars Technica, specializing in video game hardware and software. He has journalism and computer science degrees from University of Maryland. He is based in the Washington, DC area.